


Passports

by Callie4180



Series: BBC Canon 221b Collection [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (not at all graphic), 221B Ficlet, Gen, Reference to Torture, Sherlock prompt challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 17:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7943440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callie4180/pseuds/Callie4180
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Sherlock Prompt Challenge (http://sherlockpromptchallenge.tumblr.com/), a 221b.</p><p>The August prompt: "Vacation."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passports

**Author's Note:**

> There is some reference to how Sherlock spent his time between TRF and TEH, so if suggestions of torture would upset you, please don't read this. It's very subtle, and not at all graphic, but please, take care of yourself.

He could tell him the truth.

That hadn't occurred to him before.

It hadn’t been a holiday. Far from it. Holidays were sun, drinks, beaches. Holidays were train rides, and nice shoes good for walking, and smiling strangers. Passports. Museums. Fountains. Statues. Universities, libraries, books. 

Holidays were times you wanted to remember, pictures in albums.

It hadn’t been a holiday.

Holidays weren’t guns and knives. They weren’t break-ins. Holidays weren’t smashed hard drives, lighter fluid and matches. They weren’t travel by night and hiding by day. They weren’t days of utter silence.

Holidays weren’t meetings with scowling people in alleys. They weren’t lies for the sake of lying; they weren’t barter and threats and, at times, coercion. They weren’t disguises. They weren’t surveillance. They weren’t fights, and they weren’t ambushes.

Holidays weren’t killing.

Holidays weren’t chains. They weren’t scourges. They weren’t the glowing tips of cheap cigarettes. They weren’t dogs. They weren’t hunger and nausea, panic and exhaustion, adrenaline and cortisol. Holidays weren’t bone-deep cold. Holidays weren’t terror.

Holidays weren’t desperate.

It hadn’t been a holiday.

“So what were you doing all that time, really?” John had finally asked. “You never said. Big adventure, was it?”

John's eyes, curious, smiling.

Sherlock pushed his shaking hands deep into his pockets. “Nothing worth telling,” he said, casually, looking away. “Bit of travel. Boring.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kedgeree for a quick beta.


End file.
